Doctors prescribe various medications for physical and mental disorders and illnesses. Individuals, who are young and in good health, generally take one medication for short periods of time for a specific health problem. They may for example take a pill every 12 hours for 10 days. It is not too difficult for most relatively healthy individuals to remember to take one pill after breakfast and another pill after dinner for example until the container is empty. Generally there will be no serious problems if the individual fails to take the pill after dinner and ends up taking the pill a few hours late or even skips a pill for 12 hours and then adds an extra half day to the 10 day period specified by the doctor.
Some generally healthy individuals are however extremely busy during some period of time and need reminders to take medication. These individuals may for example be students taking final exams, doctors during internships, farmers at harvest time or engineers during a new product launch. Due to concentration on an important task, busy people can forget to take medications.
Individuals with serious health problems and older people may, under a doctor's orders, take a number of different medications. Some of these medications may be taken once per day, others three times per day and still other every two hours for example. Some medications can be taken together with other medications.
Some medications cannot be taken with another specific medication. There are also medications that require a minimum time between each dose to control the maximum quantity of a chemical that is in the body at any given time.
Doctors find that many patients have difficulty taking medication as prescribed. In addition to the reasons mentioned above, these difficulties can be due to disabilities as well as occasional forgetfulness. Failure to take medications as directed by a doctor can result in serious problems. In some situations doctors have patients admitted to hospitals to ensure that medication is administered in a prescribed sequence following a specific schedule. Hospitalization is expensive and can only be justified for relatively short time periods. Nursing homes are employed for longer time care. Nursing homes are less expensive than hospitals but they are still relatively expensive. A substantial number of people could remain at home and take care of themselves if they could take medications as prescribed by their doctor rather than being confined to a hospital or a nursing home. An aid to maintaining prescription medication compliance can keep some individuals out of a hospital or nursing home.
Small containers can be purchased and used to hold the medications that are to be taken at a given time. For example there could be a first container for the medications to be taken at breakfast, a second container for medications to be taken at lunch time, a third container for dinner time medications, and a fourth container for bedtime medications. Containers for several days can be filled at one time. Such a system can work well for organized individuals who follow substantially the same schedule each day. However if they skip a meal from time to time, are extremely busy or have their schedule interrupted by an activity such as travel, there may not be anything to remind them to take medication at specific times. Occasionally the containers can become mixed up resulting in medications being taken at the wrong time. There is also a lack of verbal reminders and instructions that may be necessary or helpful for some individuals.